


Blend

by TheGreatCatsby



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 16:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3575823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatCatsby/pseuds/TheGreatCatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their relationship isn't normal, and Nishiki knows it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blend

Coffee dates are easy. Find a cafe, sit down, talk. There's food, but there's also coffee, and there's no reason to eat. No pressure. 

So when Kimi asks Nishiki on their first date, he tells her they should get coffee. And they do. 

There are countless cafes in Tokyo, and Nishiki thinks, if he plays his cards right, their short relationship will only play out amongst them. Short, because why would he be with a human any longer than necessary? He's only keeping her around because she might be useful. Having a human around as a friend, or girlfriend, makes him appear more human. He's blending in. It's a move for survival, nothing more. 

Short, and then they'll part ways. Maybe not on good terms, but she won't be dead. She'll be able to vouch for Nishiki. We dated and he didn't eat me, he can't be a ghoul. It's a good plan. 

So there's one cafe, then another, then another, and Kimi says, “You know, the first time we met it's because you were getting coffee and you spend a lot of time in cafes” and Nishiki realizes that it's been five times that they've been out and that no, he isn't a cafe person, he drinks his coffee alone while studying, but with Kimi his routine has changed. He drinks most of his coffee with her, now. 

They talk about school and the future and Nishiki finds himself oddly invested. Kimi wants to make her parents proud, even though they're gone. She doesn't want how they've raised her to be a waste. She wants to help people, she just needs to find the right job. Nishiki admires that about her, her ability to face the worst in life and come back fighting. Her need to help. The fire in her eyes when she talks about moving forward. 

Her life is full of uncertainties, but she's so certain. 

By the time they're on their sixth coffee date, Kimi nudges him as they walk out the door and says, “Don't you think that's enough coffee?” 

And he should break it off now. Why does he need to pretend for someone he's just using? It shouldn't matter what she thinks. Shouldn't matter if he never sees her again. 

When she asks him to dinner, he says yes. 

*

Nishiki has been pretending to be human long enough that he doesn't even react to the disgusting smell of human food in the restaurant. He can convincingly agree with Kimi that it all smells delicious. He can even smile around a mouthful and have it look completely genuine. And when he does, it tugs at something in his chest. 

He hasn't had to do that for a long time. He remembers being five, and his sister giving him small bits of bread, easy to start with, and how horrible it tasted. And she looked so sad, having to put him through that, but she said it was for the best. They needed to blend in. She taught him how to throw it up, later. And she apologized every single time, saying that a sister should never have to cause her younger brother pain like that. 

He orders something easily digestible and small. 

“Most guys I know eat tons,” Kimi says, half teasing and half worried. Like she wants to ask if he's okay. 

Nishiki hasn't eaten with humans in so long that he's forgotten what's normal. So he clears his plate and orders dessert and focuses on Kimi's voice and her lovely smile and ignores the horrible taste on his tongue and the way the food sits heavy in his stomach. 

When they kiss, when he drops her off at her apartment, she tastes wonderful. Wonderful in a way that doesn't make him want to eat. It just makes him want to kiss her more. 

He walks home alone and makes himself throw up in an abandoned alley before the food starts to poison him. As he takes several deep breaths to calm himself, kneeling there on the pavement, he thinks that he didn't have to finish dinner and dessert just to convince Kimi that he was fine. 

And then he thinks, for Kimi, he'd gladly eat every bite. 

And that scares him. 

*

The hunger takes him by surprise. This isn't new. Sometimes Nishiki gets so absorbed in being human that he forgets to hunt, and then weeks have passed and he's sitting in the library and someone comes to sit next to him and smells like the tastiest thing in the world. 

And then it happens with Kimi. They're studying, and she comes over to sit next to him on her sofa with two mugs of coffee, and she leans close to him. And he can smell her. She smells delicious. His mouth starts to water. 

And there it is. The reason why this can't possibly work. 

He stands up and mutters something about forgetting a book and is out the door before she can even ask what's wrong. Later that night, he stalks several people and can't kill any of them. Not without thinking that they could be Kimi, if he got desperate enough. He ends up at one of the popular suicide spots in the city, where he knows the peace-loving ghouls at Anteiku go to get their food. He finds a body, tears it apart, keeps some for later. 

The next morning he wakes up with a scream on his lips and fading images of Kimi's blood all over him, her body torn apart by his hands. There are three missed calls from Kimi. He holds his head in his hands and stays there and, not for the first time, thinks, if only I were human. 

It's moments like these that he hates himself just for existing. 

The phone rings and he lets it. 

*

That evening he curses himself for how stupid he's been. 

He's a second year pharmacy student at one of the toughest universities in the country. He came from nothing. He is allowed to be happy. He can make this work. He's made things work before. 

The only thing he's ever put as much effort into is his academics, and he's willing to do even more for Kimi. Because the way she smiles at him makes him feel like everything is going to be fine, and he needs to feel like that. 

He goes to her apartment with chocolates that they will eat together, and when she opens the door she bops him on the head and snaps at him about how worried she was, how stupid he was for making her worry, and he apologizes, and then she looks shocked. 

“Apologies sound so wrong from you,” she says. 

“Well, I don't do it often,” he tells her with a shrug. 

“But you'll do it for me?” 

He gestures to the chocolates. “Don't make this any sappier than it needs to be.” 

Kimi's eyes narrow. “That's...romantic.” Then she grins. “Aww, Nishiki! How romantic! I know what we can do—let's watch a movie and eat these. And we'll cuddle under a blanket!” When Nishiki opens his mouth to protest she adds, “You owe me.” 

Nishiki doesn't resist as she pulls him inside. The movie is horrible, the chocolates are worse, and he feels like those couples in those shitty romance films that seem unrealistically happy. But Kimi is a warm weight on his shoulder, and everything else is just background noise. 

*

It isn't normal, and he knows it. He measures their relationship in the meals he has to throw up in secret, in the amount of humans he's tried not to kill (and the ones he has, which make him feel guilty), in the number of cafes they visit (“I'd like to visit them all with you,” Kimi tells him in one of her sweeter moments), in the injuries that he has to hide and the lies he has to tell.

In the smiles that Kimi gives him. The kisses that they share. The nights spent together. 

The ways that he hurts himself trying to keep her close aren't so bad as long as she's still smiling.


End file.
